Mercy

“Jakob, I can see your fuckin’ vagina from here! Either sit with us like you got a pair or keep playin’ pussy in the hallway! It’s your call, kid!” Billie Joe hollered, bringing our transitory moment of reflection to an abrupt, and somewhat disturbing, end.

Flustered beyond words and face flushed with embarrassment rather than the physical exertion which haunted his features prior to entering the house, Jakob poked his head into the modest, musically themed cave of a den where the old bastard had hollered from, still perched upon the piano bench with his fingers resting motionless in his lap. I had migrated from my place beside him to stand before a small window located behind his remarkable, yet portentous, antique piano, gazing out upon the inky black shroud that had temporarily bested the sun’s glowing reign over the earth. Phoenix was situated about my hip with an alarming, glossy-eyed stare that saw nothing and recognized even less, yet those blue eyes obstinately remained wide open. Whether he was aware of the erratic spasms of his own petite arms was debatable, for he couldn’t feasibly be beyond the infantile phase that compelled a child’s arms to twitch and flail without them having the slightest inclination as to why those irritating little peach blobs were always invading their personal bubble until that one glorious day in which they discover that, gasp, those chubby mitts were theirs for the operating. Hell, those bad boys could actually hold things and throw things and smear things all over the fucking walls. What a brilliant concept that would be for young Phoenix, though with a swift pang of remorse, I doubted if he’d live long enough to reach such a fantastic discovery. The thought brought an unexpected tear to dribble down my gaunt features as I remembered the impossible size my baby girl’s eyes had grown to when her arms ceased their spastic flailing long enough for her to stare at a hand and wiggle a finger before promptly clamping them down upon my vulnerable nose. How she’d giggled at my outright astonishment, rapidly raising her hand to experience her new abilities once more and, of course, to earn just one more rise out of her equally thunderstruck daddy.

Goddamn that old bastard for bringing forth all sorts of wildly painful memories with his disquietingly accurate aptitude for a good ol’ fashioned fuck of the mind. Just bend over ‘n’ take it, Fairy. Ain’t nobody but you’s as good a fuck.

Through the reflection in the window I witnessed Jakob taking a few cautious steps forward before he bent forward to whisper, “What’d you do to him?” into his father’s waiting ear. Two pairs of eyes, one dark and one light, locked with mine through the windowpane, and I grew reluctantly cognizant that they could depict the tear gliding down my cheek as easily as I could perceive their twin expressions not quite of concern but of blatant curiosity. Their failure to coddle me in yet another of my innumerable moments of delicateness both pleased and disappointed me because as greatly as I wished to be comforted in that instant, I would have despised the idea of them pressing question after painful question pertaining to the source of my emotional ache.

Then again, Billie Joe wasn’t exactly in need any explanations. I wasn’t certain how his voodoo vibes managed to consistently rape every square inch of my mind, but a tickle, a seedling of an idea, made me wonder if proximity was a factor. If so, that old man wasn’t fucking touching me with a ten foot pole. Not until I received a few answers myself.

“Not a damn thing,” Billie grunted back. “Go take your nephew away from my Fairy, he’s makin’ ‘im hysterical.”

I could clearly see those green eyes sparkling at me through glass, challenging me to put up a fight, but the most I was able to produce was a convulsive turn of the heel and my own blazing stare as I hissed, “I am not hysterical!”

With a cheeky smirk, he countered, “You got ‘nother tear on your face that says somethin’ diff’rent.”

Jakob sighed and advanced upon me, brown-nosing conformity to his father’s wishes twisting my stomach into furious little knots of sudden revulsion. This had to be why Jakob envied me so. He was jealous of the attention the old bastard threw out at me despite how I never demanded it of him, jealous because it was attention he’d never justly obtained from his father as a child. The distance between the old bastard and his sons managed to puzzle me despite how distressingly obvious it had been to detect with as little as a few moments spent with the family as a whole, but a nagging part of my mind seriously doubted whether the Armstrongs had ever been entirely whole. Forget the years spent alone with their father in a secluded home, for they meant nothing if Billie Joe had always been the verbally abusive recluse I’d come to know and despise in my few weeks of treating him. Such a prominent antisocial personality would have been incapable of properly raising two mentally stable sons, so naturally one would turn to drugs for comfort while the other sought affection through men who reminded him of a father whose inability to reciprocate any form of unconditional love left him feeling neglected, unwanted, and emotionally abandoned. They were a lethal triple threat of hidden insecurities for one to possess, though I’m sure Elliot relished poking and prodding at each one just to watch his ex-boyfriend’s visage of defiance fade away into bitter fragility.

Shit, Jakob and I were more alike than I would have liked to admit, yet a pocketful of considerable differences made our personalities vastly diverse. Where he strived for a sense of control over his life and emotions, I allowed past horrors to haunt and distort my current existence until I was nothing more than a fucking parody of myself. Where he was quick to give anyone a piece of his mind with a brutal honesty that would splinter the vainest of creatures’ confidence to sawdust, I held my tongue and chose only to speak when spoken to…though a subconscious need to fulfill Elliot’s vicious commands regardless of being free from that closet and shock-collar may have had something to do with molding that philosophy into my Plah-Doh brain. Where Jakob had been neglected and ignored, I had been given an amount of attention so unhealthy, so disgusting, that a sheltered childhood would have been something I craved with the intensity of a half-starved, half-rabid, wholly mad dog.

No wonder Jakob grew bitter at Billie Joe’s odd fascination with me because the old bastard never truly appeared to give a damn about anyone until his precious little Fairy awarded him with an undeserving pity-suck. Once again, I was bestowed with an unhealthy spotlight of revolting attention, but there was something else in the old bastard’s interest in me that didn’t quite scream abuse quite as loudly as Elliot or any of the others who had hurt me. In fact, it almost felt like he was cleansing me of that buried hurt and preparing me for something greater…which made no sense. He was going to die. Surely that would only add to my laundry list of incurable psychological scarring.

“Sorry, Mike,” Jakob muttered as he gathered the vacant child into his inexperienced arms, yet I barely heard him. I was far too horrified by how, regardless of Billie Joe’s insistence upon being cruel and consistently unforthcoming with me, I was still fascinated by him.

I still needed him.

“Go be useful ‘n’ feed my gran’baby, Jake. You gotta get used to perfectin’ the bottle makin’ if you’re gonna be any good at growin’ ‘im right,” Billie Joe ordered, captivated by his son’s restricted knowledge of basic child-handling. Jakob, however, didn’t quite share the same interest or amusement in the subject, and his murky-brown eyes bulged in terror at what his father was insinuating.

“No. Nononono, I am not going to…to fucking adopt this kid if that’s what you’re trying to get at!” Jakob cried, holding Phoenix out in front of him as if the child’s touch had become radioactive. Phoenix stared at the man holding him, spittle seeping from a corner of his tiny mouth, then glanced lazily down upon his dangling toes and the menacing floor beneath him. It was almost painful to observe how long it took for the infant to understand just how perilous his new predicament was, but the moment realization struck, he began to whimper.

“Well who else’re you expectin’ to raise ‘im? I ain’t got the time left, ‘n’ Fairy here’s livin’ proof of how fuckin’ dangerous foster care is. It turned ‘im into damaged goods. Now do you really want some batshit crazy stranger raisin’ your nephew ‘cause I sure as hell don’t want that for my gran’baby.”

Every single hair on my body stood on end once Billie Joe stopped speaking, though his voice refused to be silenced within my mind. It turned ‘im into damaged goods. I shouldn’t be surprised by anything that spewed from his mouth after knowing that, at any moment, I may not be the only one cringing at the self-deprecating monster my internal voice could be. I was not the only one with access to every goddamn recollection in the ramshackle, deteriorating hovels that plagued my personal version of Memory Lane. Every door to each miscellaneous memory was his for the opening to flaunt before me with one outlandish technique after another, his most devastating being a piano driven lullaby and a frightening ability to mimic Elliot’s voice and mannerisms simply to send me reeling right into a psychotic break.

I both feared and anticipated which door he would open and which psychosomatic guerrilla attack he would use next time around.

“Fine! I’ll feed him, but…but I’m not adopting him!” Jakob all but screamed, storming from the room with a wailing Phoenix still held a good foot out in front of him. As juvenile as he was handling the situation, I almost expected him to stick his tongue out at me to visually express his aversion before he left the room, but no such absurd gesture was made other than the ridiculous way in which he insisted upon carrying his nephew.

“You say that now, boy, but you ain’t stupid! You don’t want this kid turnin’ into Fairy anymore’n I do!” Billie Joe shouted.

“Fuck you!” Jakob and I bellowed in unison, though I doubted he heard me over the infant’s delicate cries.

The old bastard wasn’t quite as deaf to my outburst. “It ain’t nothin’ personal, I promise,” he cooed, his voice oddly seductive for one who drove me to temporary fits of madness on purpose. “I’d just hate to see one o’ my own abused.”

I groaned because his explanation made sense, yet it felt more like mockery each time he declared that having a grandson like me would be such a goddamned horrible thing.

“I know, I know…it’s just not fair!” I whined, turning away from the window to face my patient. My client.

“What ain’t fair?” Billie grunted, eyebrow cocked in feigned ignorance.

“You! You dick around in my head too much when I know nothing about you! For all I know, you could be some psycho criminal who faked his own death to evade arrest! Please…please…I deserve more than that. For me to allow you to keep digging through all my memories, you’ve gotta give me something in return!”

The old bastard was unnaturally silent. His dissecting eyes continued to bore into me, but he refused to give me what I so desperately needed.

“Throw me a fucking bone, you bastard!” I shrieked, darting forward until I was less than a foot from his recoiling body. Forget my fear of proximity, for I had a feeling an aggressive, in your face approach would work more effectively with the cunning old bastard.

“What d’you want me to say, Fairy? Tell me what you wanna know,” he whispered, arms crossing protectively across his chest. He appeared to be shielding himself from me, and the power that rushed through me upon his simple gesture of insecurity was fucking liberating. He may have been inside my head at that very moment, but I had full control. For once in my pathetic excuse for a life, I had become the one to fear.

“Who the fuck is Frankie Wright? Who the fuck are you?” I interrogated, my expectant glare bringing the old bastard to avert his eyes.

“I can’t, Fairy, I can’t tell you!”

“And why the hell not?” I growled, patience running dangerously thin.

“You’ll hate me! I don’t want you to think I’m an asshole, but I am! I done some shitty things I ain’t too proud of, I lost the only damn fool who mattered, pushed my boys away, ‘n’ now I’m bullyin’ a fuckin’ torture victim! I just…I don’t wanna push you away too!” he babbled, sniffling between every few words…but it wasn’t enough.

Not even close.

“But you are. You are pushing me away by being so fucking secretive all the damn time!”

“I know ‘n’ I’m sorry, Fairy! I’m so fuckin’ sorry…but I can’t talk about Frankie. It hurts, goddammit, it hurts!”

At that point, I’d grabbed his wrists in order to bring his alarmed, tearful eyes back up to meet my gaze. If I pushed just a bit harder, I’d have him blubbering about the mysterious Frankie almost instantly. The tactic always seemed to work beautifully for Elliot when dealing with my supposed insolence, after all.

“Yes you can. If I can sit and listen to you singing a song you pulled right out of my fucking thoughts, you can at least tell me about one painful memory from your past,” I pressed, inching the pair of us slowly enough along for the old bastard to be completely unaware of what I aimed to do if he persisted in keeping his mouth shut.

“No…I’ll quit pickin’ on you…please, just let it go!” he begged, eyes widening as his back collided with the wall. “Just let me go,” he added, voice barely audible above my angered panting.

“Not until you tell me that one simple thing! What was he to you?!” I spat, hardly aware of my body as it bore more and more weight upon the sickly man beneath me. I did, however, notice how his arms began to shake under my grasp.

“I killed ‘im, ok?! He loved me, ‘n’ I fuckin’ killed 'im! Now go ‘n’ do it already, Fairy! Show me what that bastard did to you ‘cause Lord knows I deserve it!” Billie Joe sobbed, struggling against me simply to compel my body to attack, to inflict pain upon him in ways that only the most decrepit of creatures could ever find pleasurable.

The moment it occurred to me that the old bastard assumed I was going to rape him, I recoiled like a spring, stumbling into the piano bench while my legs attempted in vain to backpedal into a state of balance. As my ass crash-landed onto the cushioned bench below, Billie Joe slid down the wall and crumpled to the floor, sobbing.

“Why’d you stop?” he wailed. “Why the fuck did you stop?”

I paused, horrified with what I’d led him to believe…horrified at what I came so close to following through with. Was my subconscious honestly willing to rape a confession out of a dying man?

With a strangled cry, I fled the scene and closed myself behind the first door I came across, not the least bit astonished to find that I’d inadvertently locked myself in a closet.

Coiling into a ball on the floor, I thought, No, Old Man…no one deserves that kind of punishment…